Privacy & Community Policies

Community Guidelines

Everyone benefits from stronger, more prepared communities. But the internet can be an unkind place, especially when dealing with topics that touch survival, politics, religion, firearms, and so on.

The Prepared was founded in part because the “silent majority” wanted a place to be civil and discuss preparedness without any of the junk.

So we strictly enforce these community guidelines and ask for your help to build the kind of place we can all be proud of.

We will use our best judgment and defer to freedom of expression whenever possible. You may or may not get a warning ahead of time or a notice after moderating. We welcome a conversation if we got something wrong, but in the end, moderators have final say and they won’t hesitate to remove bad actors.

The punchline is “be civil and don’t do things that would get you fired.” More specifically:

Debate is encouraged, but do it constructively — debate ideas, not people.

No politics (see below), religious promotion, or other topics that tend to just create flame wars and don’t directly relate to prepping. There are plenty of other places for that.

No bigotry or slurs against groups of people for things they don’t control. Everyone is welcome here, regardless of color, creed, orientation, nationality, and so on.

No clearly-debunked theories. 9/11 was not an inside job, chemtrails aren’t a thing, and the Illuminati have your best interests in mind — they promise! 😉

No sales or promotion of legally-controlled items, including firearms, armor, medicine, etc.

Many people get into prepping because of issues that in some way touch politics. And many of the events we prepare for (and how we prepare for them) are influenced by what’s happening in our world.

That makes it hard to discuss things like preparing for water shortages without discussing local regulations on rainwater collection, for example.

You’re welcome to speak objectively about politics as long as it is factual, related to prepping, and doesn’t come across as trolling.

For example, you could reference a study that shows how California made mistakes in managing public land for wildfire risk, what bills are being debated by the state going forward, or how you think tax money should be used. But you can’t cross the line into “those Commiefornian libtards are ruining ‘Merica!”

Privacy Policy

Your privacy is very important to us. Although most companies say that but then ignore it in practice, we actually feel that way and make the hard calls to live up to it — our founder even lost his career in government in part because he sided with Apple in the FBI vs. Apple encryption debate.

The Prepared does not:

“Out” you.

Spam you.

Sell or give your information to entities not under our control or where we can’t verify their compliance.

Take any actions on your social profiles (or any other third-party service) without your explicit permission.

Comply with voluntary government requests.

You may use many of The Prepared’s public services without providing any information beyond the basic things collected while browsing the web, such as your IP address. When you elect to, The Prepared collects personal information solely for delivering our services to you. For example, you may give us your email address, password, username, picture, credit card information, name, billing address, and shipping address.

Such info is stored securely and generally not accessible to anyone outside of The Prepared. Exceptions are when it’s necessary to securely transmit info to third-party vendors for actions you take, such as a credit card processor. All third-party vendors have strong data protection agreements, including GDPR and PCI compliance.

Cookies are used for industry-standard practices across our services, including remembering when you’re logged into your account and measuring how many readers see an article.

GDPR: We make every effort to comply with all privacy laws (and have helped write a few of those laws ourselves!) If you are subject to the GDPR privacy laws, and any or all of The Prepared’s services (including third-party vendors) are not in compliance, then you may not use our services or you expressly waive any damages/recourse if you continue anyway. We are a small startup, please be kind.

Warrant canary: As of June 2020, The Prepared has not received any government subpoenas.

Medical and general “don’t be an idiot” disclaimer

It’s impossible to teach people about emergency preparedness without discussing things like medical and survival situations.

Unfortunately, the realities of our modern legal system mean that a few bad apples ruin it for everyone else by reading something on the internet, something going wrong, and then blaming other people for their own decisions and circumstances.

By using this website or any materials we create, you agree that:

Any information provided is not meant to be definitive or to replace more-qualified sources. When in doubt, treat it as “infotainment.”

You understand things you read on the internet should not override advice you receive from your doctor, legal authorities, etc.

You will not hold The Prepared or anyone associated with it responsible for your own decisions and circumstances.

You understand that advice you see here is not perfect — even though we always do our best to be the most accurate content around.

The whole point of being self-reliant is that you recognize you’re responsible for yourself. So please, don’t be an idiot and then blame us.